Yeah...lets just say politely (since he was good enough to engage with us on Amazon) that the introduction about the gom jabbar test was full of fail.

Too often the articles were written from the point of view that Frank's characters were in conventional roles, and rarely looked at the fact that Frank purposefully set up his own conventions for his characters to follow, i.e. the articles are written from the viewpoint that protagonist = good guy/antagonist = bad guy.

This especially fails in the role of the two main protagonists, Muad'dib and Leto II. Are they good guys? No, not really. They have 'good' goals, but they can't be said to avoid "evil" decisions for that greater "good", so much so that evil and good really can't be used in that context. There is survival, on a scale that would be fairly inconceivable if Frank hadn't spent so much time dedicated to showing the reader how to think long-term.

It was rather distressing when I realized that some of the articles authors felt that some of the stories about Muad'dib were fabricated, that he would never do that but might use the story as a plot point, for example Muad'dib making Drums out of the skins of his enemies. That's meant to be shocking, it's meant to show the reader that Frank isn't shitting you about the horrors of Muad'dib's Jihad. Also, its very much not to be seen as an 'evil' act, consider it more useful as propaganda. That's closer to the ethical center in Dune Messiah than Good vs. Evil.

Another fault was how often the articles were written from the standpoint of a democratic ethical base (Ours) rather than an aristocratic one (DUNE).

I was referring to the description of Gaus Andaud's speech as having been immortalized in Bene Gesserit records such as Heretics.

That's just fucked up no matter how you think about it. (It's included in the book as an excerpt in an epigraph. Taking place in Duniverse time FIVE THOUSAND YEARS after the events in Heretics and Chapterhouse, it is never mentioned once in the actual narrative. How the fuck could it be?!)

Jeff Whathisname wrote:I would say that the Weirding way of the Mentat is, first, a cool sounding subtitle, and second, that it refers to philosophical thinking. Philosophy twists the mind into new forms of thinking just as the Bene Gesserit weirding way twists the body into new forms of attack and defense

your answer makes more sense, tho, so I'll go with it ... just a little ways, not too far ... the whole phrase is sort of .... offensive ....

................ I exist only to amuse myself ................

I personally feel that this message board, Jacurutu, is full of hateful folks who don't know how to fully interact with people. ~ "Spice Grandson" (Bryon Merrit) 08 June 2008

Finally decided to buy this(thanks to Leagued who made it crop up again), I must say that being a bit of a cherry picker (hi Byron) I'm expecting that most of the critics I've read here will be true, but after all if there is one that gets it he deserves support, even more so if he's a Cast Out.